Conference Talks

Building a Research Team may cost you your Research Practice

Behzod Sirjani

Research has never seemed more critical to the success of companies or products than it does today. Almost every company talks about being customer-centric and new research tools pop up each year. Yet within the practice of research, many people still cling to the idea that it's only the research team that should be conducting research. In this talk, Behzod challenges us to think about the ways in which we act as the gatekeepers limit the impact that we have in organizations and the emphasis we put on building our teams hinders our abilities to build robust practices. He dives into the opportunities and pitfalls of democratizing research across organizations and leaves us with question "How would things look differently if we built our practices first and our teams second?"

Research Ops, War Stories and Triumphs

Kate Towsey

Research leaders across the world are embracing Research Operations to help them deliver practices that are efficient, ethical, scalable and impactful. And they’re investing time and energy in building Research Operations teams to look after this work. But exactly how can Operations help turbocharge a research practice?

Over the past two years, Kate Towsey has built a global Research Operations team for Atlassian. In this talk, she’ll share war stories and triumphs, realities and reminisces and how Ops has helped amplify research efficiency and impact along the way.

Supercharge your product insights with creativity

Christina Li

As researchers we lean on traditional user interviews. But, what if there was another way to find deeper insights using our creativity?

In this talk I will share how we can all be creative! I will share techniques, practical tips and lessons learnt over the years. I want you to take these ideas away and use them in your practice.

Predicting the Future

Emma Craig

Researchers are increasingly called upon to help their product teams look up ahead, around corners, and into the future to build for the long term. These foresight studies - looking at how industry trends, markets, and operating environments are changing - can make considerable impact in organizations aiming to be multi-generational companies.

In this talk, Emma will explore how researchers can contribute to robust foresight studies that drive company innovation; how to track and interpret weak signals, and how to connect predictions to product roadmaps.

Atomic Research

Daniel PidcoCK

Just as Atomic design allows you to scale a design system, Atomic research allows you to scale a research repository. Learn how this relatively simply concept not just helps you organise and store UX knowledge in an infinitely powerful manner but becomes an incredibly useful way to synthesising and thinking about knowledge itself.

How to thrive as a UX research manager

Janelle Ward

So you want to be a UX research manager? Congratulations on this important step in your career! No doubt you’re being considered for this role because you’re an expert at what you do. You’re excited, but also a bit hesitant, because you know that your expertise will only take you so far. You ponder spending less time doing research projects. You wonder about the responsibility of people management, and its focus on the professional development and well-being of other researchers.

In this talk, I’ll ask you to take a critical look at this juncture in your career. I’ll discuss issues specific to the UX research world, including strategies for coping with a hybrid manager/lead role, and best practices for using your finely-tuned user-empathy skills to help you become an empathetic people manager. By the end of this talk, I hope to leave you with some key reflections on whether a management role is the best choice for you.

How effective is your customer research?

Veronica Naguib

Research isn't the golden bullet we all hope for. We all strive for insight that is as robust and as actionable as possible, but is this happening or are we stuck in our traditional approaches?

ImpactSense have set out to better understand the current customer research industry, warts and all. We’ve run a large study with researchers, marketeers, designers, CXers, UXers and other creators or receivers of research to understand the effectiveness of research. In our talk, we will share unprecedented insight into what makes research more useful and accurate along with recommendations into a new era of accountability - all based on data collected from real people at the coalface of the industry.

Remote, in person, how about hybrid?

Qin Han

In the past two years, most of us had a forced taste of remote in-depth research - and whether we like it or not, it’s probably going to stay or at least part of our practices. If your practice in the past involved meeting people in person for research, like mine, you’re probably wondering what the future holds for in-depth qualitative research.

STBY has a proud heritage of 20 years of ethnographic approaches to qualitative research, and many global collaborations already prior to the pandemic. Over the past 2 years, we have found new ways to balance online and on-site research, from fieldwork to reporting. We call this hybrid research. We will draw on a few case studies, from both before and during the pandemic, to look at what lessons we can learn from mixing remote and in-person engagements with our participants, our colleagues, our global research partners, and our clients. In this presentation, I’d like to share some of our most interesting thoughts and ideas for design research practices going forward into post-pandemic times.

Understanding your UXR operation in order to accelerate and avoid research stagnation

Tom Hayes

In recent times the majority of organisations have heavily invested in user experience. This has led to the establishment or growth of our digital and UX teams, in many cases including the introduction of a user researcher or two as our digital colleagues cry out for the insights they need in order to be able to do their jobs.

Despite all this, User Research in particular can struggle to make the impact we all want it to and we as researchers can spend years only scratching the surface of what we want to achieve and value we can offer. To move forward it’s key we have a true understanding of 'the now'. In this talk Tom will explore how you can better understand your current state, communicate this, and explore some of those key areas you can tackle to help avoid user research stagnation and ultimately make more of an impact with user research.